From the early days of black-and-white advertisements in India’s first newspaper, Bengal Gazette, to Artificial Intelligence-driven commercials that are winning the Internet today, the Indian advertising industry has had an interesting trajectory. One of the most defining moments of this creative movement is the period in the 1960s, when young Indian advertising professionals broke out of big corporate agencies and started their own shops, points out William Mazzarella, the Neukom Family Professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, USA. Today, as part of the #ThursdayTalk bi-monthly online talk series put together by Godrej Archives from Godrej & Boyce, Mazzarella will helm a session titled Mad Men of Bombay: Revisiting the Creative Revolution in Indian Advertising. 

A 1967 ad by Godrej. Pic courtesy/Godrej Archives